Being thoughts on the practical service of imperfect means.

A consolatory essay.

Almost every man is what, if he were a horse, would be called a screw.  Almost every man is unsound.  Indeed, my reader, I might well say even more than this.  It would be no more than truth, to say that there does not breathe any human being who could satisfactorily pass a thorough examination of his physical and moral nature by a competent inspector.

I do not here enter on the etymological question, why an unsound horse is called a screw.  Let that be discussed by abler hands.  Possibly the phrase set out at length originally ran, that an unsound horse was an animal in whose constitution there was a screw loose.  And the jarring effect produced upon any machine by looseness on the part of a screw which ought to be tight, is well known to thoughtful and experienced minds.  By a process of gradual abbreviation, the phrase indicated passed into the simpler statement, that the unsound steed was himself a screw.  By a bold transition, by a subtle intellectual process, the thing supposed to be wrong in the animal’s physical system was taken to mean the animal in whose physical system the thing was wrong.  Or, it is conceivable that the use of the word screw implied that the animal, possibly in early youth, had got some unlucky twist or wrench, which permanently damaged its bodily nature, or warped its moral development.  A tendon perhaps received a tug which it never quite got over.  A joint was suddenly turned in a direction in which Nature had not contemplated its ever turning:  and the joint never played quite smoothly and sweetly again.  In this sense, we should discern in the use of the word screw, something analogous to the expressive Scotticism, which says of a perverse and impracticable man, that he is a thrown person; that is, a person who has got a thraw or twist; or rather, a person the machinery of whose mind works as machinery might be conceived to work which had got a thraw or twist.  The reflective reader will easily discern that a complex piece of machinery, by receiving an unlucky twist, even a slight twist, would be put into a state in which it would not go sweetly, or would not go at all.

After this excursus, which I regard as not unworthy the attention of the eminent Dean of Westminster, who has for long been, through his admirable works, my guide and philosopher in all matters relating to the study of words, I recur to the grand principle laid down at the beginning of the present dissertation, and say deliberately, that almost every man that lives, is what, if he were A horse, would be called A

Screw.  Almost every man is unsound.  Every man (to use the language of a veterinary surgeon) has in him the seeds of unsoundness.  You could not honestly give a warranty with almost any mortal.  Alas! my brother; in the highest and most solemn of all respects, if soundness ascribed to a creature implies that it is what it ought to be, who shall venture to warrant any man sound!